Lenovo shrinks its Google Assistant Smart Display into a 4-inch Smart Clock for music and alarms

If current Smart Displays are too big for your liking, Lenovo’s new Smart Clock might be your jam. The Google Assistant-powered display isn’t just small enough to fit on your nightstand—it’s barely bigger than the smartphone in your pocket.

With a 4-inch 480x800 touch screen, the Lenovo Smart Clock is the smallest smart display this side of the Amazon Echo Spot. And with a 113.88 x 79.2mm frame, it’s sure to fit just about anywhere (as long as there’s an outlet within reach). If those dimensions seem super small, they are—by comparison, the smaller Pixel 3 measures 145.6 x 68.2mm.

Of course, the Smart Clock is quite a bit deeper than a smartphone (79.8mm to be exact), and this is how it hides its 1.5-inch full-range 6W speaker setup and two passive radiators. Lenovo says the grey mesh-wrapped speaker is powerful enough to “fill up a large bedroom” and is tuned with Dolby’s latest background noise-reduction technology for “enhanced radio listening.” We’ll have to test it to see exactly what all that means for our ears, but based on its small size we’re not expecting miracles.

But the Lenovo Smart Clock’s main appeal is right in its name. While other Smart Displays come with 7- or 10-inch screens, the Smart Clock is no bigger than an old-school alarm clock, with multiple customizable clock faces. And it’ll do more than just tell time and jolt you awake out of a deep slumber. Lenovo is supporting Google Assistant’s wake-up routine, so your display can gradually turn on your Hue lights and raise the volume of your alarm beginning 30 minutes before your scheduled wake time. And then it can trigger a morning routine so you can get news, weather, calendar info, and anything else about your day.

Like the Google Home Hub, there’s no camera on the Smart Clock, so you don’t need to worry about anyone spying on you while your sleep (but it also means you can't make Duo calls). Around the back you’ll find a mute switch for turning off the microphone as well as a handy USB-A port for charging your phone. The Lenovo Smart Clock will be available this spring for $80.

This story, "Lenovo shrinks its Google Assistant Smart Display into a 4-inch Smart Clock for music and alarms" was originally published by PCWorld.